The subject matter herein relates generally to a connector assembly having alignment features.
Some electrical connector systems utilize electrical connectors to interconnect two circuit boards, such as a motherboard and daughtercard. Signal loss and/or signal degradation is a problem in known electrical systems. For example, cross talk results from an electromagnetic coupling of the fields surrounding an active conductor or differential pair of conductors and an adjacent conductor or differential pair of conductors. The strength of the coupling generally depends on the separation between the conductors, thus, cross talk may be significant when the electrical connectors are placed in close proximity to each other. Moreover, as speed and performance demands increase, known electrical connectors are proving to be insufficient.
Additionally, there is a desire to increase the density of electrical connectors to increase throughput of the electrical system, without an appreciable increase in size of the electrical connectors, and in some cases, with a decrease in size of the electrical connectors. Such increase in density and/or reduction in size causes further strains on performance. Due to the large number of contacts of the electrical connectors, mating the electrical connectors is difficult. For example, aligning the contacts during mating is difficult. Misalignment in the horizontal and/or vertical direction can cause damage to the contacts or the housings. Some known connectors include alignment features that have compound angles for aligning in both the horizontal direction and the vertical direction simultaneously. However, using a single alignment feature for alignment in both the x and y directions is difficult and may cause the thin walls supporting the alignment feature to bend outward rather than causing the electrical connector to move into alignment.
A need remains for an electrical connector having improved alignment features to help align the electrical connectors during mating.